Do people vote on issues?

April 4, 2007 – 1:24 pm

Michael Barone discusses the apparent transfer of votes between Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson and poses the following question and answer:

But they must also be people who believe Giuliani and Thompson have something in common that they’d like to see in the White House. What is that? … Strong leadership at a time when we’re at risk of attack, I think.

On cue, the Gallup releases results (here and here) from a poll on what qualities voters want in their next president, broken down by party:

Top Five Qualities Partisans Are Looking for in Next President

March 26-29, 2007

Republicans/Lean Republican

Democrats/Lean Democratic

Honesty/straightforward (30%)

Honesty/straightforward (34%)

Leadership/strength (22%)

Listen to people/not special interests (13%)

Integrity (13%)

Put U.S. first/focus on domestic issues (13%)

Competent/govern effectively (11%)

Leadership/strength (12%)

Good moral character/family values (8%)

Competent/govern effectively (10%)


Now these are probably things that people have to demonstrate to be considered. And it is also why challenges to these are so threatening, such as allegations of Mitt Romney’s flip-flopping (which the press and some activists seem to believe), Rudy Giuliani’s links to Bernie Kerik (which has little traction yet), or Democratic allegations of McCain switching parties (old news, but tweaking distrust). By attacking people’s character, voters no longer balance the issues.

This is also why Barack Obama is so dangerous to Hillary Clinton. How does she compare on "honest and/or/ straightforwardness" or "listening to people, not special interests"? Poorly. Very poorly.

Now, this is different than what we see now with the endorsement process. Politicians are endorsing for other reasons. Political leaders, either electeds or interest group leaders,  want access, power, and their agendas to be advanced. Business leaders (high dollar donors) want access, among other things.

This is also something to keep in mind when you look at the level of grassroots support in these fundraising numbers. Why does Obama have twice as many donors as Clinton and McCain as Romney? (or that Sam Brownback has 2/3rd the number of donors as Mitt Romney, even though Romney outraised him over 10-to-1?)

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What does all this money stuff mean?

April 3, 2007 – 8:22 am

Update: Kung Fu Quip confirms my back-of-the-envelope calculations on Romney’s fundraising. Actually, he quotes Romney confirming it.

Last night, I spent a lot of time on the phone with fundraisers and campaign operatives from around the country gossiping about the fundraising numbers. Here are some thoughts that emerged.

First, Romney’s results speak to the strength of his donor base. As Hotline’s Marc Ambinder repeatedly points out, Mitt Romney has the largest low-hanging fruit network known to politics. The idea that this is because of his "message" is laughable. The dude has zillions of rich friends. He was an investment banker and venture capitalist. Those guys have lots of dough. Proof? Compare the number of donors and contribution sizes. Romney had about 35,000, and  McCain 60,000. The average size of Romney donations was 4x larger than McCain. This tells us that a lot of people were cutting big checks to Romney. Which matches his profile (not his message)

Second, we tried to answer the question, what happened to John McCain? The first part of the answer is probably that, like Hillary, they didn’t think that they needed to start this early. As a number of reports have noted, the McCain campaign didn’t start fundraising until March. The McCain campaign simply wasn’t putting together events. The second part of the answer is there were organizational problems that have been noted. McCain startled shuffling several weeks ago. The problem that the McCain campaign has is that now they have a quarter of bad fundraising and struggling nation-wide poll numbers, although pretty good in the early states. The fundraising team is going to have to become more aggressive. And McCain is going to have to do the rubber chicken circuit.

Third, Rudy Giuliani did a great job. $15m is a great late-start number. They should be happy and proud, especially because of their low burn-rate.

Fourth, Sam Brownback substantially differentiated himself from the rest of the second tier candidates, essentially putting him in a second tier alone, and moving the rest to the third tier.

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The also-raised…

April 2, 2007 – 1:45 pm

Sam Brownback got $2m. That’s 4x Mike Huckabee. That’s good for him.

John McCain got $12.5m. Not so good… He is expected to have a high burn rate. What’s the COH? Read the statement for a little self-flagellation..

All in all, Mitt Romney won the day.

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Romney loaned campaign $2.5m; way to step on good story

April 2, 2007 – 11:21 am

Mitt Romney loaned his campaign $2.5m, according to Hotline. That was a goof for two reasons. The first is that it steps on his own story. The second is that he had suggested that he shouldn’t need to do that:

Romney himself said later that contributing any of his personal wealth to the campaign "would be akin to a nightmare," but he said he reserved the right to do so should circumstances warrant.

Now, the question is, when did he do it? Hotline gives a little hint:

The money was used to fund Romney’s "testing the water" phase — he couldn’t transfer any money from his federal PAC, and since he wasn’t a federal office-holder, he had no federal campaign cash to play with.

Which lasted about a week until he raised $6.5m.  Right? So was he just misleading reporters about that?

That said, $20m really is quite an accomplishment.

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Romney posts $23m $20m

April 2, 2007 – 10:27 am

Update: Romney loaned himself a big chunk of change…

Mitt Romney posted $23m raised.  Hotline has the story:

Ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney raised $23M this quarter, more than enough to top the field of Republican contenders.

That Romney was able to squeeze so many low hanging fruit sources in what has inarguably been a rough political quarter for him speaks highly of the relationships he’s cultivated over these years. It’s also a testament to his fundraising team, led by Spencer Zwick, and the campaign’s technologically advanced ComMitt activism platform. All Romney’s money was raised into his primary campaign accounts.

That’s quite an impressive number. Look for arguments from the Romney campaign about needing to compete financially with Hillary.

While John McCain did not release numbers today (so far) they did try to get in the news cycle by announcing someone switching from Romney’s Florida Finance Committee list to their own (no link yet):

U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today announced that Gate Petroleum founder Herbert Hill Peyton of Jacksonville, Florida will support the Arizona Senator’s bid for the White House and join the John McCain 2008 Advisory Committee in Florida.

And one of the Romney team’s lead fundraisers mentioned that, while honor binds him to Romney, if Romney were to drop out, he would, eagerly, switch to Fred Thompson:

Back in January, I had no idea that Fred was even thinking about it," Welch said. "I went ahead and committed to (Massachusetts Gov.) Mitt Romney because I thought he was the best of the lot that had shown interest in running. It would be very inappropriate and very unfair for me to say to Mitt Romney, ‘Hey, Fred Thompson decided to run and I’m gone. Bye.’ I’m not going to do anything like that. I made
a commitment, and I’m going to stick with it, so long as he is in the race.

"If he, for some reason, were to drop out, my choice would naturally be Fred Thompson."

Welch made sure to say that last sentence several times: If Romney’s out, Thompson is Welch’s guy.

But, all in all, that is just other people trying to rain on Romney’s parade. Mitt Romney wins the day.

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Hillary raises $26m

April 1, 2007 – 4:24 pm

That’s the number from the Hotline. They note that, for her, that isn’t really that impressive. Furthermore, this is a primary and general number. As the Romney memo notes, this number is a little bunk. The NYT’s Caucus points out results for Joe Biden, $3m, and Bill Richardson, $6m. They also give us a bit of wisdom:

In the logic of campaign publicity, campaigns are likely to consider it advantageous to announce numbers at the same time as Senator Clinton if they want their relatively low numbers to be overshadowed in the news coverage. Conversely, waiting suggest they may want to attract attention to unexpectedly strong results.

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Huckabee underperforms expectations…

March 31, 2007 – 12:28 pm

Now I have been harsh on Mike Huckabee’s fundraising in the past (here and here), but he is putting together a great team. The question for him has always been how he would do in fundraising. Under the theory of, if your numbers are bad, get them out early, he has put his numbers out before the buzzer. At a Washington fundraiser yesterday, he said:

He said the first quarterly report for his presidential exploratory committee will show he has raised about $500,000, which he said was his goal.

Now that’s lame. National Journal put their fundraising projections much higher at $5m +/- $3m.

 6.     Mike Huckabee
 		Former Arkansas governor Last Ranking: 7
Mike Huckabee He says that only money folks and activists are focused on the ‘08 race now. Polls show that surprisingly large numbers of voters are, too. The most interesting thing about Huckabee? He’s the Republican who Democrats assume will get traction. Our warning: Never trust a smart Republican to handicap Dem presidential politics, and never trust a smart Democrat to handicap the GOP side.
Fundraising projection: $5 million, +/- $3 million.
Fundraising ranking: 7. Almanac Profile

That’s not hitting expectations. It will be interesting to see how other 2nd tier candidates do.

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More thoughts on fundraising

March 31, 2007 – 11:06 am

In about 12 hours, the Q1 fundraising numbers get filed.  Chuck Todd has a great summary of the implications, and the Hotline has predictions. Hotline also has the Romney campaigns internal memo about how to interpret results.

First, new donors are much harder to find than existing donors. One question will be about the size and potential of a candidate’s donor base. If a donor has maxed out, you can’t go back to them for money, but if they have given small donations, especially over the internet, you can go back to them for fast money.

I hear that Sam Brownback has been building quite a good small-donor direct mail base. John McCain’s campaign was running quite well on direct mail alone before he started doing the rubber chicken circuit. And Mitt Romney’s campaign has been spending a bunch on telemarketing.

There are a series of questions that you can ask to understand these. You can ask about average contribution size, the percentage of maxed-out donors, etc.

Second, cash on hand matters a little, but not too much. So expect to hear a lot about it. All of the campaigns have substantial expenditures for office setup, prospecting for mail and phone lists, etc. John McCain’s buses are not cheap.  COH will be much more important, especially for 2nd tier candidates, in Q2. Then, the numbers are basically about how much can be blown on Ames.

Third, it will be interesting to see where all money is being spent. Geographically. How many places do campaigns have staffers? I am not sure what it would tell us, but I am pretty sure that it will tell us something interesting…

Next week is going to be fun.

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Chuck Todd on GOP money race

March 29, 2007 – 12:34 pm

This is great stuff. I’m just going to quote:

McCain: Up until last weekend, I was convinced McCain was destined for second place for the quarter. But something about the way McCain softened his financial expectations personally has me nervous that his campaign is having some fun at Mitt Romney’s expense. His campaign team members are masters of the expectation game. Apparently $25 million isn’t out of the question and that just might top Romney, which would be a moral victory for the once-and-future frontrunner who has a press corps desperate to write "McCain doesn’t have it this time" stories.

Romney: No candidate has more so-called "low hanging fruit" than Mitt Romney, which is why so many folks expect him to raise big money. From Boston, to Bainiacs (ex-Bain Capital colleagues) Mormons and Olympic folks, Romney has a lot of rich friends. Frankly, the campaign needs to finish first because the other aspects of the campaign (namely message) have been suffering.

Giuliani: The leanest campaign of the Big Six is Rudy’s and therefore it’s possible that Rudy finishes third in money raised but second in cash-on-hand which would be a nice feather for the campaign and showcase the spending war and fat payrolls both McCain and Romney are sporting. (BTW: Don’t be surprised if one or more of the campaigns delays payroll until after March 31 just to simply boost their cash totals; it’s an old trick, but still a good one)

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Romney can raise more than that…

March 17, 2007 – 12:52 pm

The Globe quotes a political scientist saying Romney can raise $15m in Q1. That’s silly. Hotline says more like $30m with $7m from LDSers. My money is closer to $40m. The Globe needs better political scientists. Or at least ones that read Hotlineblog.

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